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Averatec 3250 Revisited

I’ve had my laptop for a few months now, so I thought I’d post another update on it. In general it’s been pretty reliable, however, the one thing that did fail was the DVD burner. After doing a bit of research, it would appear that the QSI drives used by Averatec are somewhat lacking in the reliability department. So, rather than waste time getting it serviced under warranty with another poor quality drive, I went ahead and ordered a slot loading Pioneer DVD burner to replace it. It fits in the same spot as the original drive but has a black bezel and is slot loading instead of a tray. I actually prefer the slot load drive as it takes up less space when loading or unloading a CD/DVD.

I’ve also finally managed to get 3D accelerated video working on Linux as well. This has the added advantage that I can finally get the backlight on the LCD to shut off, which saves power whilst on batteries. I also found a replacement DSDT file that allows controlling the fan speed and backlight brightness through software. And, in the vein of saving power, I discovered a little program called Athcool which allows the system to save more power when lightly loaded. Plus, it makes everything run cooler, which reduces the need for the fan, further reducing the load on the battery.

There’s now an online community supporting the Averatec laptops unofficially. There’s lots of good info and a number of knowledgeable people there, I highly recommend checking it out.

4 thoughts on “Averatec 3250 Revisited”

you’ve been great to track your efforts with this laptop and here lately i’ve also been attempting to get the 3d accelarator working. i had gotten the updated drivers did the compile.
now my screen can turn off completely, but the Direct Rendering: off is still there and little things still don’t render so fast. including fancy screensavers.

can you post the links to the via kn400 how to you used, or post your own how to. that would be so great!

If you can find one for cheap, yeah. They work pretty well with linux. I’m not using mine any more (gave it to my mother in law), but I was pretty happy with it while I had it. Ubuntu supports it pretty well without any special work.